Archive for March, 2011|Monthly archive page

The next two weeks are like Groundhog’s Day. I hit another 10 bars, across 14 worlds, and every time it’s the same. I order my second pint of Wild Scallop, the same guy comes in, sits next to me, orders a pint of Amelia, and we have the exact same conversation.

It’s too random to be a coincidence, though I suppose any series of random occurrences is just as likely to repeat itself as not.

Paranoid as I am, I’m certain that there’s got to be someone pulling the strings behind the scenes, making my days repeat themselves as I travel onward.

“You know, I think I have a couple of copies of my book out in my car. Why don’t you sit tight, I’ll run out and grab one, and I can personalize it for you?” I say, brushing a stray strand of hair behind my ear as coquettishly as I can manage. You know, considering the deafening din of my own blood pumping around my skull.

“Really? That’d be incredible!” he says.

“I’ll be right back.”

I walk briskly out the door and duck down an alley. I click my heels together three times, and get the hell out of Dodge.

There’s a grand total of four people here. That’s including the guy behind the bar. Who, now that I think about it, is probably also the guy that makes the cheeseburgers.

The other two guys aren’t here together. One’s sitting in a booth with his back in the corner, drinking his Irish neat. The other one’s decked in Dickies and peeling labels from his empty bottles of Old Gentian.

No one is a regular here. Not even me, though I’ve been here 3 times in the last 2 weeks. I never see the same face twice, not on this side of the bar.

There’s nothing quite like a frosty pint of McIlhenny’s Wild Scallop at the end of a crap-tastic day.

I’m in basement bar, a hole-in-the-wall that serves 4 beers, 6 whiskeys, and 1 type of cheeseburger. There’s a definite stickiness to the tiles beneath my feet, and the polished wood of the bar isn’t much better.

It’s perfect.

You’d think a girl my size would get harassed more here, but no one looks up in this bar. Everyone’s got a deep, longing stare for their pint glass. Even the bartender never meets my eye when I order and slide my bills across the bar.

Three months later, and I’m having a hell of a time dressing myself. Most people get carpal tunnel from typing, or too much time playing video games. There are even some people even get it from tennis.

I got mine from shooting too many guns.

It’d be bad ass if I didn’t look like such an invalid. I have wrist braces on both arms, and though I’ve improved by leaps and bounds since last week, I’m still having a hard time with certain motions.

Holed up in a Montana motel, I’m popping pills for the pain and moping. I miss Em.

And that’s how our partnership came to an end. She refused to go back and kick ass, and I refused to let a priceless artifact fall into the wrong hands. We fought about all that, but really we were fighting about everything else, too.

She jumped, without me. I eventually found my way back to MIT, retrieved our cargo and the Land Rover, and found a museum without a creepy vibe where I could offload the precious object.

And then that was done, and I was out of gumption. I was completely without purpose again, save my own insatiable wanderlust.